Soft-control for collective opinion of weighted DeGroot model

The DeGroot model is a classic model to study consensus of opinion in a group of individuals (agents). Consensus can be achieved under some circumstances. But when the group reach consensus with a convergent opinion value which is not what we expect, how can we intervene the system and change the convergent value? In this paper a mechanism named soft control is first introduced in opinion dynamics to guide the group’s opinion when the population are given and evolution rules are not allowed to change. According to the idea of soft control, one or several special agents, called shills, are added and connected to one or several normal agents in the original group. Shills act and are treated as normal agents. The authors prove that the change of convergent opinion value is decided by the initial opinion and influential value of the shill, as well as how the shill connects to normal agents. An interesting and counterintuitive phenomenon is discovered: Adding a shill with an initial opinion value which is smaller (or larger) than the original convergent opinion value dose not necessarily decrease (or increase) the convergent opinion value under some conditions. These conditions are given through mathematical analysis and they are verified by the numerical tests. The authors also find out that the convergence speed of the system varies when a shill is connected to different normal agents. Our simulations show that it is positively related to the degree of the connected normal agent in scale-free networks.